FRANCE AND HER COLONIES.*
RATHER " viewy " political schemes, such as may be welcome material to the magazines in England, are more frequently launched in France between covers of their own. They are a characteristic product of the French fruitfulness of ideas and love of speculation. Commandant Prosper Germain's book probably seems less audacious to his countrymen than it would seem to us if it were written by a British officer. But while it is characteristic in form (even though exceeding the average in " viewiness "), it also consorts with a despondent mood which happens to be uppermost among sober French- men at the moment. Although we think M. Germain's colonial scheme quite impracticable, it is worth while drawing attention to it as the precipitate, so to speak, of a state of mind,—the state of mind which has just definitely accepted as true grave information about the naval strength of the country, and which seeks to reconcile national dignity and national interests with premisses which ten years ago no Frenchman would have acknowledged.
Within short political memories it seemed that France had abandoned the struggle to maintain a naval power com- mensurate with her position; and again, more lately still, it seemed that she had changed her mind once more and had renounced the theory of a purely defensive war by meansof
• La Francs Africains. Par Commandant Prosper Germain. Avec Cartes et Zraphique. Paris; Plon-liourrit et Cie. submarines and topedo-boats, or a commerce-destroying war by means of swift cruisers (la guerre de course, as Frenchmen call it). The battleship conception of naval policy still holds the field, but only as a theory. For thoughtful Frenchmen it has been shattered, temporarily at all events, by the crushing Report on the state of the Navy which was presented to the Chamber and Senate a few months ago. M. Germain is one of those, if we do not misunderstand him, who cling to a grand naval policy ; but it is impossible to read his book without recognising that he is really without hope, and that he is trying to snatch consolation by thinking out a plan for cutting the colonial coat according to the national cloth. The first part of the book is taken up by an argument —chiefly traceable to the writings of Captain Mahan—on the incomparable influence of sea-power. The conception which informs all this argument is that the partition of the world's territory is ended, and that the partition of the seas is beginning. We cannot admit that the seas can fall under the control of any nation, even that which has the most powerful navy, in any sense comparable with that in which land can be appropriated. The seas of the Far East are said by M. Germain to belong to Japan, and in a conventional sense of course they do; but they do not belong to her in any strict or irrevocable sense. That fine old phrase "the high seas" suggests a community of possession which is as significant for fighting navies as for merchant navies. If the battle ot Tsushima had been won by Russia, the seas of the Far East would have been controlled by her in the very sense in which possession can now be assigned to Japan ; but there would still have been navies in the world ready, and no doubt fit, to defeat Russia when challenged. A weak navy owns nothing; a strong navy may own the most distant seas, even those which have perhaps never been cut by its keels. M. Germain speaks of Great Britain as having abandoned two seas because under the redisposition of our Fleet our ships have been withdrawn from them. We say nothing here of the wisdom of this rearrangement, but at least those who were responsible for it effected it because they thought that by so doing they would make our mastery of those seas ultimately more secure. In truth, the command of the sea is one and indivisible,—and, as Bacon named it, "an abridgement of Empire." There is no local command of the sea. Those who can defeat the fleets of their rivals, and they alone, possess sea.power.
This is not the only case in which we cannot follow M. G-ermain's argument. His comprehension of Empire is so different from ours that we can never feel sure that terms mean the same thing for us. He says, for example : "If England were once conquered, that would mean the in- dependence of Canada, of Australia, of Egypt; the revolt of India, coerced by the yellow races ; the utter downfall of the British Empire, of which all the parts are joined together only by those magnificent battleships which rule the world from their anchorages at Portsmouth and Dover." This is just defensible in its superficial sense, but no English. man will be able to read it without feeling that it is quite wrong in bias. We all know that England will never be conquered apart from her Colonies ; nor will they look for their " independence " as the fruits of Britain's down- fall. As we do not admit the reality of the factors with which M. Germain makes his calculations, we naturally do not agree with his astonishing conclusion that each continent will find what we may describe as its intra-mural interests sufficient to unite all the races within it, and to put it in conscious opposition to all other continental groups beyond the seas. Sea-power, it is argued, will eventually cause the formation of a United States of Europe which will be opposed indifferently to the yellow races, to the United States of North America, to Australia, and to every other group which has une mbne collectitritg. For one thing, the physical arrangement of the globe does not lend itself to such distinct groupings. And let us not forget that the conquest of the sea by man means the friendliness which comes out of the speed of travel as well as the acute hostility which comes from the struggle for sea-power. The upshot of the whole of M. Germain's argument is this, that it is useless for France to try to retain possessions which are too far away from her doors,—which lie in seas which are not "French seas." Colonial possessions must be determined by the partition (le partage) of the water. What cannot be securely
defended must be abandoned or exchanged for something else.
Of course it will be said that under the Entente Confide
French possessions are insured to all intents and purposes by the British Navy. M. Germain is lying in wait for this argu-
ment, and tramples on it as an unsound policy. It means, he says, that in return for the naval protection offered by Great Britain, France would have to put her Army at our disposal whenever we wished to quarrel with Germany. Therefore France must herself protect whatever she holds, or snake up her mind to lose it—or exchange it. At this point M. Germain comes to his solution, giving it in the form of a balance-sheet with profits and losses. He would offer to exchange with foreign Powers all French possessions except the African colonies. The latter, he thinks, could be made perfectly secure by a concentra- tion of French strength, and France would have a glorious civilising mission unharassed by anxieties elsewhere. French Indo-China, all the French Indian and Chinese possessions, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, Djibouti, and so forth would go, and to her present African possessions France would add British Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and Gambia, and German Togoland and the Cameroons.
M. Germain does not deceive himself about the reception
his scheme is likely to have, and forecasts it in words to which we need add nothing :— " By the bare exposition of these proposed exchanges I expect to raise the most violent recriminations and the most indignant protests of exaggerated Chauvinism, and to set in revolt the partisans of world-wide expansion. I am prepared for the anger of all those whose private interests will suffer, and for the dis- dainful contempt of all those who wish to live under the stubborn conviction that things must remain eternally as they are,—of those who demand before everything just peace and tranquillity without the least change or trouble.'
M. Germain also goes out to meet the natural objections that one cannot honestly sell populations without their consent, that the redisposition of physical power in the world would cause the gravest complications, and that trade would be injured and vested interests sacrificed. These objections, he says, are sans valeur. We cannot agree in a single instance. We imagine, however, that in any case agreement between British and French theorists would be difficult. British colonies are an almost unpremeditated growth in which waywardness and
independence are encouraged. The French colonies, even the most flourishing, are constructed on schemes of geometrical rigidity, and all plans for dealing with colonies in both countries reflect these broad temperamental differences.
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